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Opera 50 Web Browser Will Offer Anti-Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Mining Feature (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fighting-back dept.

BrianFagioli writes: The upcoming version 50 of the Opera web browser will offer an integrated anti-Bitcoin mining feature. Besides Bitcoin, it will also block the mining of other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Ethereum. If you aren't aware, some websites are hijacking user computers to mine for cryptocurrencies. This is not only a potential violation of trust, but it can negatively impact the computer's performance too. Mining is also a huge waste of electricity. Opera 50 will offer an optional setting that, when enabled, blocks this nonsense.

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:All well and good by theweatherelectric · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But it still has to be able to detect that the code is even there.

    It's just a block list. Specifically, this block list. You can make use of the NoCoin block list in, for example, uBlock Origin.

    Opera isn't doing anything particularly special here and it's a shame that they don't give the block list author any credit in the blog post (though they do in the comment section and in opera://about/credits in Opera 50 beta itself).

  2. Another angle by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How difficult would it be to limit how much CPU the browser has access to ?

    Restricted to minimal CPU by default, allows you to whitelist sites that you trust.

    Plausible ? Better way ?